Thousands of troops should be forced into the reserves and hundreds of weapons
mothballed for Britain to make defence savings, an influential report
written by a senior Parliamentary adviser has said.

Thousands of troops should be forced into the reserves and hundreds of weapons mothballed for Britain to make defence savings, an influential report written by a senior Parliamentary adviser has said.

Because there is “no silver bullet” to make efficiency savings in the MoD Britain should adopt a radical strategy based on the premise that the chances of an attack from another state are very slim, according to Prof David Kirkpatrick’s report.

In Making Ends Meet he sets out the steps required by the Armed Forces to reduce the defence budget by £3 billion from its current £37 billion total.

The paper recommends that British forces which provide homeland defence should be “transferred from regular to reserve status; their equipment mothballed and their personnel given only part-time training”.

The only forces to be kept in the regular military should those on or preparing for expeditionary operations or involved in the nuclear deterrent.

As the Government vacillates over its final decision on cuts to the Armed Forces a formula to make the 10 per cent saving has been put forward by a consultant to the Commons Defence Committee.

The intensity of the defence review debate became apparent yesterday after the Ministry of Defence pulled out the Defence Minister Nick Harvey from the launch of the paper written for the think tank Centre Forum.

The cuts issue has been inflamed since The Daily Telegraph last week disclosed a leaked letter in which the Defence Secretary Liam Fox warned the Prime Minister of “draconian cuts” and warned of their “grave consequences”.

Ministers still cannot decide on precise cuts, including whether to keep the Navy’s two new aircraft carriers or reduce the surface fleet in half. The National Security Council will meet next Tuesday to try and make its final decisions on the Strategic Defence and Security Review.

The report from Prof Kirkpatrick admits the move would reduce Britain’s ability “to resist a largescale surprise attack by a rival nation” but this was considered “extremely unlikely within the next decade at least”.

In any international crisis, regular forces could be supplemented by “volunteer reserves” which would receive basic training and if required “could be mobilised and trained to an operational level”.

The report proposes Army’s entire force of Challenger 2 tanks, numbering about 400 and heavy artillery should be reduced by two thirds and put in storage.

Corresponding reductions would be made in the signals, logistics and medical regiments. The changes, which would not affect infantry or engineers, would reduce the strength of the field army by some 20 per cent to 80,000.

The current aircraft carriers would be reduced from two to one and then replaced by the new Queen Elizabeth when it’s built around 2015.

With only one carrier to protect the fleet of 22 frigates and destroyers could be go down by a third.

The number of RAF combat aircraft should be reduced by half shrinking the air force to below 200 jets, its lowest since the First World War.

The paper concluded that the defence budget “could thus be cut by about 10 per cent without any significant risk to national security”. It would also not inflict “irretrievable damage” to Britain’s military or industrial capabilities.